Human Sexuality

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPT. 14, 2011 (Zenit.org ).- Does induced abortion increase a woman’s risk of mental health problems? The question has been asked continually over the past several decades with dozens of studies indicating a positive correlation [1], but a … Read

Hamza Yusuf, an Islamic scholar, gives a thought-provoking and powerful presentation of these key concepts of any sexual ethics in his article, “Desire and the Tainted Soul: Islamic Insights into Lust, Chastity, and Love,” which appeared in The Social Costs of Pornography: A Reader (the Witherspoon Institute, 2010).

This article summarizes Yusuf’s thoughtful and thought-provoking essay, focusing on the movement from the hedonistic, self-centered self to the ethical or virtuous self, and ultimately to the self at peace. It shows how chastity is a central virtue enabling this movement, insofar as this virtue helps a person to take command of his desires and emotions and not be under their command. Read

In the most important and obvious sense there is certainly sex in Heaven simply because there are human beings in Heaven. As we have seen, sexuality, like race and unlike clothes, is an essential aspect of our identity, spiritual as well as physical. Even if sex were not spiritual, there would be sex in Heaven because of the resurrection of the body. The body is not a mistake to be unmade or a prison cell to be freed from, but a divine work of arto designed to show forth the soul as the soul is to show forth God, in splendor and glory and overflow of generous superfluity.

But is there sexual intercourse in Heaven? If we have bodily sex organs, what do we use them for there?

Not baby-making. Earth is the breeding colony; Heaven is the homeland.

Not marriage. Christ’s words to the Sadducees are quite clear about that. It is in regard to marriage that we are "like the angels". (Note that it is not said that we are like the angels in any other ways, such as lacking physical bodies.)

That does not mean "vaguely pious, ethereal, and idealistic". "Spiritual" means "a matter of the spirit", or soul, or psyche, not just the body. Sex is between the ears before it’s between the legs. We have sexual souls.

For some strange reason people are shocked at the notion of sexual souls. They not only disagree; the idea seems utterly crude, superstitious, repugnant, and incredible to them. Why? We can answer this question only by first answering the opposite one: why is the idea reasonable, enlightened, and even necessary?

The idea is the only alternative to either materialism or dualism. If you are a materialist, there is simply no soul for sex to be a quality of If you are a dualist, if you split body and soul completely, if you see a person as a ghost in a machine, then one half of the person can be totally different from the other: the body can be sexual without the soul being sexual. The machine is sexed, the ghost is not. (This is almost the exact opposite of the truth: ghosts, having once been persons, have sexual identity from their personalities, their souls. Machines do not.)

We cannot know what X-in-Heaven is unless we know what X is. We cannot know what sex in Heaven is unless we know what sex is. We cannot know what in Heaven’s name sex is unless we know what on earth sex is.

But don’t we know? Haven’t we been thinking about almost nothing else for years and years? What else dominates our fantasies, waking and sleeping, twenty-four nose-to-the-grindstone hours a day? What else fills our TV shows, novels, plays, gossip columns, self-help books, and psychologies but sex?

No, we do not think too much about sex; we think hardly at all about sex. Dreaming, fantasizing, feeling, experimenting—yes. But honest, look-it-in-the-face thinking?—hardly ever. There is no subject in the world about which there is more heat and less light.

Therefore I want to begin with four abstract philosophical principles about the nature of sex. They are absolutely necessary not only for sanity about sex in Heaven but also for sanity about sex on earth, a goal at least as distant as Heaven to our sexually suicidal society. The fact that sex is public does not mean it is mature and healthy. The fact that there are thousands of "how to do it" books on the subject does not mean that we know how; in fact, it means the opposite. It is when everybody’s pipes are leaking that people buy books on plumbing. Read

Some people believe that only men called to the priesthood and men and women called to be consecrated virgins have a vocation to the single or celibate life and that neither a man nor a woman can have a vocation to the single or celibate life in the world. But this opinion is incorrect. In order to show why, it helps to reflect on the following: 1. The meaning of vocation and the universal call to sanctity or holiness and to love, even as God loves us, with a self-giving, redemptive kind of love; 2. Vocation and “states of life”; and 3. Personal vocation and the call to single life in the world.

Butterflies, blushing, giddiness, throbbing heart, are all symptoms of…..(drum roll) yes, those bothersome, endearing, often dangerous yet exciting experiences we so commonly call “love.” But can and should this sudden onset of attraction be worthy of the title of love? What’s more, is it necessary to romantic marital love or is it something to be discarded as mere play of the emotions, a stoicly held distraction from virtuous love?

Surely, all of us can remember an instance, likely in our youth, where someone struck us with Cupid’s arrows. Maybe it was the “bad boy” who came to land in our circle. He was tall, lean, broad–shouldered, rugged and a fitting candidate for Michelangelo’s model of David. Shameless as it may sound, many of us must admit that our ‘David’ made us tingle all over and left us acutely aware of his every flinch.

Are moral judgments against homosexual behavior anything more than the expressions of emotional bias or narrow religious beliefs? Two recent and highly divisive political decisions, one in the U.S. and the other in the U.K., would have us believe they are not. The first, of course, is the Obama administration’s recent announcement that it thinks that the federal law known as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional and consequently that it will no longer defend the law in court. DOMA was passed in 1996 in response to early political initiatives to legalize same-sex marriage. The law defines the term “marriage” for use throughout the entire body of federal law as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and the term “spouse” as “only a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” The law also protects states from being legally forced to recognize as a marriage a same-sex relationship given legal recognition as a marriage in another state. DOMA passed both houses of Congress by huge majorities and was signed by President Bill Clinton. Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, harshly criticized the “moral disapproval” of homosexual lifestyles expressed by those who passed the law saying it reflected “stereotype-based thinking and animus.” Holder also said he doubted whether “reasonable arguments” could be made in defense of DOMA.

“The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations” is a booklet, edited by Mary Eberstadt and Mary Ann Layden and published last year by the Witherspoon Institute. The booklet summarizes a consultation of 54 scholars held in Princeton, N.J. in December 2008 sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute and co-sponsored by the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. A sampling of participating scholars includes Hadley Arkes of Amherst University, Gerard V. Bradley of Notre Dame University’s Law School, J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas, Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Foundation, Jean Bethke Elshrain of the University of Chicago, John Finnis of Oxford University, Robert George of Princeton University, William Hurlbut, M.D., of Stanford University Medical School, Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychiatry, Margarita Mooney of the University of North Carolina, David Novak of the University of Toronto, Roger Scruton of Oxford University, Gladys Sweeney of the Institute for the Psychological Studies, and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia.

Dr.s Richard P. Fitzgibbons, M.D. & Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. explain the early signs of Gender Identity Disorder, the sources of the disorder and counsel parents on strategies that can be counterproductive as well as strategies and therapies that are helpful and effective.